


Once Upon a Harkness

by rocknrollout



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s02e13 Exit Wounds, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 16:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2031861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocknrollout/pseuds/rocknrollout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't sure how long he had been under, and had lost count after his 100th or so death. It had to be at least a thousand be now. Deaths, not years. He was pretty sure he hadn't even gotten through a week yet.</p><p>If Jack hadn't been found by Torchwood early, hadn't been frozen and the team stopped Gray without him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Harkness

**Author's Note:**

> This story wasn't beta read, so I'm sorry if there are any mistakes.

Captain Jack Harkness loved this planet. In all his travels through time and space, Earth was definitely one of his top-ten. The people and the ever-changing cultures were practically a tourist’s dream. This planet could be absolutely spectacular and simply terrifying in the same day; no, the same moment.

He had never been so fond of what it was made of, though. Especially now. The dirt filled his lungs, stomach and throat; pretty much anywhere you really don’t want dirt. It was so compact that even if he wasn’t buried under hard Earth, he wouldn’t have been able to breathe.

It was rough, the dirt, small and large rocks breaking open his skin and getting stuck once the surrounding flesh and muscle healed. He was cold too; the dirt was like ice, and his body temperature was non-existent. There were 20 feet of the ground above him, and fifty-thousand below. Jack Harkness had had better days.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been under and had lost count after his 100th or so death. It had to be at least a thousand be now. Deaths, not years. He was pretty sure he hadn’t even gotten through a week yet. His clothes were still there; the collar of his greatcoat was tucked up against the back of his neck; usually comfortable and warm, now scratching at his tender flesh. It hadn’t been so long that they had decomposed. Wait, would they decompose? Jack didn't have a clue.

Gray was the first thing on his mind for a while. His little brother had been lost for so long. A decade had gone by before Jack had finally given up searching for him and joined the time agency. Gray might still be alive physically, but his young soul had been shattered long ago and now only a shell remained. One fueled by hatred and pain.

As the deaths went by, Jack began to lose touch with the reality he had grown so fond of. He was forgetting his life before this hell; he was letting his team slip through his dirt-coated fingers, and everyone else he’d ever met. Slowly, the small things he fought so hard to keep with him started to disappear. Owen’s buttons on his lab coat: the color, and stupid phrases that man found utterly hilarious. The color of Tosh’s glasses, and the expression on Gwen’s face when she was comforting someone.

It burned him to lose these little things that meant nothing to many. It had never meant this much when he was mortal, that’s for sure. In the small moments where he was alive, his lungs gagging on dirt as they tried to fill with non-existent air, he would try to remember things. Easier said than done. Lack of oxygen to the brain made it exceptionally difficult to think straight. He’d go over everything he could, and after he’d died, he would just start where he left off. If he could remember, that is.

At first he’d try to keep the whole team in his head, but the longer he was under here, the more he realized that there was only one person he wanted to remember.

Ianto’s best tie was the red silk, he was rough during sex and liked to bite Jack’s neck and earlobes when Jack was trying to get paperwork done. He had a new threat everytime Jack touched the cof...

He died before he could finish that thought.

 

“I think I’ve found the signal,” Tosh exclaimed in excitement, one hand feverishly typing on her computer to try to pinpoint exactly where the signal was coming from. While she usually preferred to stand at her desk, Owen had convinced her to sit on a stool. Only because her other hand, the broken one, happened to be pressed against the bullet hole in her side.

After Gray locked Ianto, Gwen, and the bastard (Well, John, but it’s the same thing) in the vaults, he came back upstairs to see if Tosh was dead yet.

Thankfully, Owen had told her where he kept an emergency taser—work table, third drawer down and to the right. Once Gray knelt down to check her pulse, she pressed the fully-charged taser to his chest. He collapsed with a yell, unconscious, next to Tosh. He was now in the body-freezer until they knew what to do with him. Owen, whom had sprinted back to the Hub after escaping the melting power plant, was the one to stitch Tosh up and opened the vaults before the others could be eaten by the now very much awake weevils.

They were now running around the Hub, integrating John and desperately trying to find Jack. John was sitting down in the ground, hands cuffed around a railing while Ianto stood over him. He wasn’t going to let the ass get away until he knew that Jack was safe.

“See, I told you!” John yelled in response to Tosh. He threw his hands up as much as was possible, looking incredibly irritated.

“Shut it!”

Owen had been sitting, but promptly lunged from his stool to put himself between Ianto, the one who had yelled, and John, the one who almost died by welsh hands.

“It’s 20 feet underground,” Tosh said to try and get everyone’s attention. It worked; Gwen and Ianto were now standing next to her while Owen stayed near John. “In the center of Cardiff.”

“At least he’s close,” Gwen joked halfheartedly, trying to alleviate the tension in the Hub at least a bit. No one even smiled.

Ianto ran his fingers through his short, black hair. The usually coiffed locks were sticking up at all ends, perfectly expressing how stressed he felt. He stared at the screen in front of him, seeing the signal and quickly figuring out exactly where in Cardiff it was.

“How the hell are we gonna get him out of twenty feet of bloody dirt?” Owen asked, exasperated. While he couldn’t be tired or sick, he could still be as annoyed as ever with the world. And just life in general. 

For a few long minutes, the room was completely silent. Even John knew that he needed to shut up for a bit. Even with all that genius, they couldn’t think of a way they could dig down twenty feet of hard Earth in the middle of public without it taking days, maybe weeks to finally get Jack out safely.

“Rhys knows a guy with a backhoe. We could use that,” Gwen suddenly exclaimed.

“Call him,” Ianto ordered. No one questioned the tea boy giving orders, and Gwen immediately got on her cellular to call her husband.

 

Ianto wanted to cry, or maybe just scream until his lungs gave out. He had never been this frazzled, worried about the man that could not die. It was colder than it should be in the middle of November, he was tired, and until Jack was safe in his arms he wouldn’t be able to calm down. They were in the center of Cardiff square, with a large group of people in heavy coats, watching them behind police tape. The crowd had begun growing around the moment they reached ten feet. They were now fifteen feet down.

“Stop digging at seventeen feet,” Ianto yelled towards the operator running the backhoe; he wasn’t going to risk hurting Jack by digging too far down. The man nodded without looking at Ianto.

They continued digging in silence as the day ran out.

After two hours total of digging, they were finally ready to send some people down to dig the final three feet before they got to Jack. There were no arguments when Ianto said he was going down, and Owen ended up volunteering too because Jack was definitely going to need some type of medical attention.

They wore tight harnesses so they could be safely lowered without the risk of getting stuck in the pit. Their feet hit the soft dirt, and Owen complained about how this was not what he expected to ever have to do with his life. Ianto ignored him, too focused on getting Jack out. Thankfully, the Earth had already been turned up by the backhoe, so it wasn’t that hard for them to dig.

Ianto hadn’t realized how impossible it was to dig when there was nowhere for the dirt to go until now. The hole was about 10 feet wide, and they were just packing all the dirt off to the sides. He only hoped Jack was in the center of this pit or they could be digging for hours blindly.

“Bloody hell!” Owen yelled, as his shovel hit something that most certainly wasn’t dirt, nor a rock. They both jumped off of the ground they were standing on, and dropped to their knees. A minute of digging with only their hands had most of Jack’s upper-body uncovered.

The man was dead, dirt spilling from his gaping mouth. His eyes were shut, thankfully. Ianto didn’t think he could bear seeing Jack’s expressive, blue eyes so cracked from the dry dirt. His clothes were disgusting, holes torn through them over the centuries.

Owen leaned over his boss, and opened the man’s mouth. “From what I can tell, his whole throat’s clogged; lungs too probably.”

“What do we do?” Ianto asked, running his fingers through Jack’s disgustingly tangled and dirt-clotted hair. It was the only comfort he was able to take from the moment.

“Get them cleared before he revives,” Owen stated and didn’t say anything more. He stared up at the harness lines above them reaching towards the world. There were multiple people leaning over the hole, watching them work to get Jack out: Gwen and Rhys were there, but no Tosh or John. They stayed at the Hub, Tosh because she was too hurt to be of any help besides technical support, and John didn’t have a choice. He was chained to a guardrail. “We need a gurney down here!” Owen yelled. Nothing happened. “Now, people!”

Finally, the stretcher was lowered down to them. As Owen guided the orange plastic to the ground, Ianto uncovered the rest of Jack’s body. He didn’t look physically hurt, but that was just on the outside. Carefully, they lifted him onto the gurney, large straps holding him down.

Two men and one corpse were slowly and carefully lifted from the pit foot by foot. Once back where they could breathe clean air, Jack was lowered to the ground. Owen was immediately over the man’s body, yelling out necessary medical tools for him to safely and quickly get all the dirt out of Jack’s throat. They didn’t know how long it would take for him to come back.

As Owen was getting ready to intubate Jack, the man’s eyes opened. He struggled against the bindings, coughing out dirt in chunks. He thrashed, unused to the ability to move after so many years of immobility.

Ianto watched his captain, refusing to let the tears fall; Torchwood doesn’t cry, no matter how hard it is to watch the man you might just love die slowly and painfully. Jack was suffering, and it burned Ianto to have to watch the usually brave and charismatic man fall so far. But he refused to cry.

Owen tried to get Jack to focus, calm down for a few second but he was already dying. His body wasn’t ready to handle life just yet.

Before anyone could do anything useful, Jack stopped moving.

 

It was dark, well past midnight, and the streets of Cardiff were almost completely deserted. Except for an SUV parking on the side of the street, spaces intended for the tenants.

A man in a ruffled and dirty three-piece suit got out of the driver’s side of the black car, running towards the passenger on the left of the car before the other man could try to get out alone. He opened the car door, and helped Jack exit the vehicle safely.

“Careful, Cariad, you’re still recovering,” Ianto murmured comfortingly in Jack’s ear, with his arms wrapped securely around the other man’s waist.

Jack shut the door weakly, and they trudged up the couple of stairs leading to Ianto’s flat, Jack’s arm slung over Ianto’s shoulder. Thankfully, Jack was no longer in his dirty clothes. He was wearing a pair of Rhys's sweatpants, that had been in the trunk of Gwen’s car, Ianto’s undershirt, and the greatcoat he'd refused to let go of over his shoulder. He was barefoot but probably hadn’t noticed.

Jack coughed up some wet earth, groaning with his head hung. Owen had removed most of it from his lungs and throat, after he had revived and died four more times, but there was still dirt in his stomach and intestines.

“Come on, Jack, only a few more minutes and then you can rest,” Ianto promised, as he helped his captain up the three steps leading to his flat. Ianto was ecstatic that he lived on the bottom floor at that very moment. Holding Jack with one arm, Ianto fished for the keys somewhere buried in his trousers pocket.

Once the correct key was inserted through the lock, they stumbled inside. Ianto helped Jack out of his greatcoat, placing it on the coatrack, ready to be thoroughly washed later. He let go of Jack for a moment so the older man could sit on the couch, but Jack decided the floor was much nicer. He face-planted into Ianto’s carpet, moaning weakly.

Ianto sighed, “Jack, you need to take a bath.” He leaned down, and rested his hand on the small of his lover’s back. The man turned to his side and stared up at Ianto. “Want me to help you up?”

Jack shook his head, unable to speak clearly, but didn’t try to get up.

Officially done dealing with the stubborn man’s refusal to cooperate, Ianto heaved him up from the floor. “Try to assist at least a little, please.” After a minute of struggle, they were standing and (sort of) walking to the bathroom.

Ianto moved Jack to the floor of the bathroom, and leaned over the tub to start filling it. The water was warm, but not scalding. Jack tried to remove the shirt he was wearing, but didn’t have enough strength to pull it over his head. He looked incredibly frustrated with himself, as he pulled at the bottom of the tank top weakly.

“Let me,” Ianto huffed gently, helping his captain and lover with the clothes. Placing the older man’s trousers and shirt folded on the toilet seat, Ianto carefully maneuvered Jack into the tub. “Just relax.” Ianto scrubbed down his lover with a soft hand-towel soaked in the baby soap he still had from when he babysat his sister’s kids almost religiously; before he had joined Torchwood three. Jack’s skin was too raw for anything tougher.

After washing Jack, Ianto helped him to slowly stand and climb out of the tub. As he was stepping out, Jack’s foot caught on the edge. He tripped, sending Ianto and himself to the ground and pressing his wet flesh against Ianto’s already ruined suit.

Ianto sighed, watching the much older man lying on top of him. Blue eyes stared back down at him, filled with endless pain and just the smallest hint of Jack. Ianto hadn’t seen it at first, or during the drive home; his Jack must be gone, he had thought, no one remembers themselves that long, but now, as he stared only at those eyes, it was clear. Jack was still with him, and the bastard was fighting.

They slowly sat up, and Ianto helped Jack into a pair of track pants. The older man stayed shirtless as they walked into the bedroom. Ianto pulled the duvet back and Jack lied down, burrowing his head into the soft surface. His still wet hair left streaks of water across the pillows, but neither man noticed.

Running his fingers along Jack’s rough skin, Ianto silently cursed every person, force or deity that caused Jack’s suffering. And, while he was at it, he might as well thank them for not allowing the careless man leave him just yet.

Ianto kissed the nape of Jack’s neck, and stood up. He left his bedroom, wanting to clean the bathroom before falling asleep himself. The white and blue floor was wet and covered in dirt and soap, the bath was still filling with dirty water, and Jack’s borrowed clothes sat on the floor in a wet mess.

It didn’t take long to sanitize the floor and throw the damp clothes into a hamper to be washed tomorrow. Standing up from his position scrubbing the floor, Ianto cracked three vertebrae in his back with a slight back-bend and two twists to both sides.

It’s almost three A.M, Ianto registered in the back of his head, giving the clock on his side-table a casual glance. Changing from dirty suit trousers and a ruined shirt into a pair of clean boxers and a baggy shirt was probably the highlight of Ianto’s night.

As he crawled on the unoccupied side of the bed and lied on his side, staring at Jack’s almost-peaceful face pressed snugly against a pillow, Ianto corrected his previous thought. Seeing Jack safe and clean, no trace of what he’d gone through to be seen, was the highlight of his life.

Ianto fell asleep slowly, not wanting to close his eyes in case he never saw Jack again. Incredibly irrational, but hey, running on no sleep and prolonged fear for 12 solid hours does that to a guy. He ended up finally sleeping when Jack wrapped one arm around his middle and gently pulled him against his body.


End file.
